Two decades ago, Michigan native Bryan Smith was fresh out of The Evergreen State College with a bachelor's in marine biology and began working — predictably — as a marine biologist in Washington state’s San Juan Islands.

But he soon realized he was bored.

"It wasn’t social enough and I just sort of thought, 'OK, well, I've got to do something different that involves people," he said. "I thought, 'I'll become a kayak guide' and … I started guiding kayak tours and then I just got hooked on the sport."

Smith quickly became a top professional at both sea kayaking and whitewater kayaking, receiving sponsorship contracts and traveling the world while taking others on expeditions.

But every professional athlete has body parts that come with a limited shelf life for arduous activity. And that’s when Smith, at the time in his late 20s, decided to give filmmaking a try and went to Wal-Mart to buy his first movie camera for $400.

Now age 42 and a seasoned veteran of extreme sports filmmaking, Smith has received critical acclaim for his breathtaking work, swapping that early camera for more sophisticated equipment, like a half-million-dollar camera that attaches to a helicopter.

Now a resident of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, where he lives with wife, Lise-Anne — also an athlete, whom he met kayaking — and 7-year-old son, Nelson, Smith has been shooting films for his company, Reel Water Productions, and for National Geographic as one of its "Explorers."

In 2010, he earned a National Geographic Expedition Grant for leading a team of kayakers in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, with hazards that include — but aren't limited to — volcanoes, grizzly bears and mosquitoes. He has also worked as a field producer and director of photography for National Geographic TV shows, including "Alaska Wing Men," "Nat Geo Amazing" and "Monster Fish."

Among his films is 2011's "The Man Who Can Fly," a one-hour National Geographic Channel special about rock climber and BASE jumper Dean Potter’s exploits at El Capitan in Yosemite.

"A lot of the work we did in Yosemite was pretty out there in terms of the dangers of filmmaking," said Smith, who shot footage while hanging on a rope at 3,000 feet.

The camera crew maneuvers over a rock face.(Photo11: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/REEL WATER PRODUCTIONS)

The film was made more poignant by the fact that Potter was killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight. Smith acknowledges that there is always a risk when participating in such activities.

"I think any of these adventure sports have danger, but (one was) a trip I did early on to the Rio Huallaga, which, at the time, was the last remaining un-run tributary of the Amazon," Smith said. "What made that trip really dangerous … is that the Rio Huallaga is the epicenter of the Shining Path."

Smith and his colleagues never stumbled across the Shining Path, a militant group that caused the U.S. State Department to deem the location off-limits. But because the waters were so dangerous, they only made it about halfway downriver before realizing they’d have to hike their way out instead.

"I think the reason I’m still alive is that we cut it off when it got really dangerous," he said. "We're quite good at knowing when (our journeys have) gone too far."

Smith will be sharing some of his thrilling experiences as a NatGeo lecturer Friday at the Fred Kavli Theatre in Thousand Oaks.

"It's really, in a lot of ways, kind of my life story on picking up my first camera and some of my favorite expeditions and trips that I've done through National Geographic," Smith said. "The presentation is, I hope, inspiring in a sense that I hope to take people from … having an idea and passion to success. My goal (as a filmmaker) is to create an emotional connection with an audience."

The next step for Smith, an avid conservationist, is to concentrate on his own backyard.

"The British Columbia coast is an incredible wilderness and, in light of current events and all these pipelines and different things, I’m going back to my roots and doing a big conservation story," he said. "As a camera person or filmmaker, what it always comes down to is you experience these places, (but) a lot of decisions are made about environments and the outdoors, and a lot of times the people making these decisions have never even seen these places.

"The BC coast is the perfect example of that. It’s a true wilderness. We recreate and play in this wilderness and wild world all the time, and so I think for every good adventure story we tell, we probably ought to be telling a conservation story.”

Bryan Smith and his camera platform are suspended from trees during one shoot.(Photo11: CONTRIBUTE PHOTO/REEL WATER PRODUCTIONS)

Smith enjoys sharing his experiences with audience members of all ages, backgrounds and levels of daring.

"The audience is usually very diverse. That’s why I love working for National Geographic as a brand. They're just so widely recognized you'll get everything from young kids to 70- (and) 80-year-old people," he said. "I think it’s just human fascination in exploration and adventure, which is universal."

As to those audience members who think they could never take the chances that Smith has, he offers a practical response.

"I think all people can relate to certain aspects in my talk in that adventure is in all of us," he said. "My thing is adventure comes in different forms. Adventure can be as simple as taking a right-hand turn where you always take a left."